


SSC: Solas' Chapter

by Mythalenaste



Series: The Shitlord Spirit Chronicle [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Other, Solavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3557531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythalenaste/pseuds/Mythalenaste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First oneshot of the Imshael(Inspired by the Dragon Age Prompt Generator), Self-appointed Poltergeist of the Inquisition, filling everyone with guilt and regret fic series. Why? Because he can. ‘Choice spirits’ are funny that way.</p>
<p>Solas gets a talking to about his life choices. Set post-game. Solavellan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SSC: Solas' Chapter

**Author's Note:**

> “Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent.”   
> ― Hunter S. Thompson

“How are you, Dread Wolf?” It took Solas a moment to recognize the voice and when he did, it sent a sliver of ice through him. It seemed that some things just wouldn’t stay dead…

“Away with you, Spirit.”

“Oh, that’s gratitude for you! I’m fine, thanks for asking. You should be a  _little_  nicer to me, especially since no one else here really wants to speak to you since you left your lady love-” The ancient force of desire was suddenly striding along beside him, it’s physical form a passing simulacrum of human shape. The fault in it’s mimicry was subtle but evident: the bruises under the eyes, the corpse like quality to it’s countenance. Despite all this, it was grinning at him with a twisted kind of mirth.

“Meaning that you have chased away every other spirit who has attempted contact with me? I do not desire your company, Imshael. Leave.” Solas strove to outpace it with as brisk a walk as he could manage, the heavy pain in his chest flaring with his anger.

“Not my company, no. But what about her’s? Such a pity, it would have been so nice not to die alone. Now, you both get to! What a choice to make-” Imshael’s chuckle was like breaking glass.

“Enough!” The very thought chilled him, as had been the creatures intention. He was vulnerable to it’s suggestions in a way he had not been in many centuries. The loss of the orb, the loss of her…it had wakened in him an emotional fragility he was unaccustomed to. She would recover from the loss of him, she had to…he had to believe she would.

“Awfully presumptuous of you, ‘Solas’ to think she’d just forget you. Pick up the tiny, shattered little pieces of her fragile ickle heart and just move on. Her? Really? You think the  _special_  mortal that’s  _different_  from all the  _other_  mortals will just be able to _forget_  the love of her life? That she’ll choose another after you?”

“She will heal, she will grow and move past this-” He was speaking more to himself than Imshael now, trying to drown out the dread within his soul.

“Ha, and they call me deluded! Ah, to have the hubris of divinity-”

“I could not have told her. I would not wish this path of mine upon-”

“Oh please, don’t be such a jackass, Dread Wolf. Taking away personal freedoms just isn’t like you, Fen’Hellathen.” His name, his real name, made him grit his teeth. Wolf of the Rebellion…freer of slaves…the master trickster capable of duping the gods themselves.

“She would never understand-”

“Oh come on, she’s Mythal’s latest toy in a thousand, thousand years; full to the brim on the knowledge of all the toys who came before! They’d give her a hint…oh my, what a big scowl you have, Wolfy! Don’t like having a slave lover? Funny, you never used to complain-” Rage skittered through his mind, bitter and cold and snapping at him like the wind.

“Leave, Imshael. Now.”

“Or what? You’re diminished, old chap, you’ve let yourself go during your long dognap. An old grey wolf with more bark than bite. Besides, you’re only mad because I’m telling you what you already know.”

Solas kept silent, not wishing to give Imshael anymore ammunition against him. Maybe if he ignored the spirit, it would go away. It was also but a piece of what it had been, a frail shadow of one of Anaris’ many mood swings. He did not owe it answers or attention.

“What? No clever retort from the Master of Tricksters himself? I liked you before you got all noble-hearted and boring. You used to be fun. Used to have fun, too. Did the vallas’lin all the ‘true elves’ wear just bring back too many fond memories?”

She had worn the vallas’lin of Andruil, the huntress. Solas tried not to picture her face, beautiful both with and without the markings of a slave. He had never met any being more unassailably free. Clever, quick and fierce as the goddess she strove to emulate. Calling her his ‘heart’ had not been a mere empty phrase. She was wise, if young and sometimes infuriatingly roguish. She had become more than just the mark on her hand, more than the faded glory of an old empire to which he had once belonged. The Empire where her beloved tattoos would have marked her as a slave, where her master would have offered her up as sacrifice for one of Andruil’s hunts…the empire in which he had spent so many blind centuries reveling in the power of near godhood, where spilled blood and casual cruelties were mere parts of life…

“A game, then. It’ll be fun, like an I-Spy of spiraling misery and regret? No? Hmm, I’ll fill the fun void since Andruil appears to have your tongue…oh, that’s clever, though I do say so myself. She used to threaten to have your tongue cut out, if I remember correctly. But then you were so skilled with it she could never truly follow through…were you skilled for Lavellan?” The spirit leered at him, walking backwards and keeping always just out of his reach.

“Away with you!” He sent a bolt of ice driving at the air where the spirit had just appeared, only for Imshael to dodge at the last moment.

“Hmm, guess not then? Still nursing those old lusts, Dread Wolf. Can’t be good for you. An anticlimactic love affair with a mortal where your clever tongue went to waste…well, not entirely. You did lie up one side of her and down the other.” Her bare face loomed in his minds eye, pain and confusion tainting her beauty as he relived leaving her again and again.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Unacted desires, old friend. Your wants have a frisson of enduring purpose, like fine wine aged to delicious, poignant perfection. I can’t resist. Also, you changed. It’s exciting! New, morally disposed and less fun you! Turn and face the strange and all that. But…back to our game:

So, what do you think Lavellan is thinking about right now? I’ll go first with…the taste of your lips right before you left her forever? Hmm, no. Too fluffy for your witty vhenan. Oh! I know! How about how she’ll never be accepted back amongst her ‘People’ because you took her ‘slave markings’?”

“She made a choice-”

  
“Oh please, don’t make me laugh. I’m a _choice spirit_ , I know all about choice. And coercion is not choice. She thought she was choosing you, you idiot. You freed her from any and everyone who she’ll ever care about. Even I think that’s cold and they call me a  _demon_.”

“I…” Solas fell to his knees in the snow, burying his head in his hands and letting out a low cry of grief. _You have sundered her from what she knew, what she thought her people were. You have broken her faith not only in you, but in everything._  “I couldn’t tell her…”

“Because you’re scared and ashamed. Big bad wolf running away with his tail between his legs…oh this is too good! Somewhere, the other Creators are laughing all the way to the Void. Flames, what am I saying? I’m laughing too.” He had no reply for the demon, no defense that did not sound weak even to his own ears.

“I didn’t lie to her…”

“That’s your riposte? You omitted? Oh please, that doesn’t make it better. Especially when she asked you to lie to her. How did it go? ‘Tell me you don’t care so I can call you a cold-hearted son of a bitch and move on’? And you couldn’t even do her that courtesy? You are the Dread Wolf, the Dalish’s boogie man, more now than you ever were.”

“It was a foolish mistake…”

“Mhmm, and you’re usually so clever, too. So is she. Was she. In fact, the only truly stupid thing she’s really done since becoming the Inquisitor? Trust and fall in love with you. She’s your masterwork, Fen’harel, your magnum opus. Supremely powerful and unbeatable and unbroken…and you brought her to her knees. Even I have to admit, that’s talent. Do you ever get sick of ruining everything you touch?”

“LEAVE ME!” The pulse of rift magic tore through the air, summoned forth from the bitter medley of rage and regret that seared his mind with every step Solas took further away from his latest failure. Fleeing into the hills, a broken, misremembered and unloved god. When Solas finally caught his breath in the icy mountain air, he opened his eyes to glare at the nothingness of the brilliant snow surrounding him. Imshael was gone, his cruel laughter one with the howling wind.


End file.
